Thu, 2012-05-24 19:52 — walker
Donor: Helt
U-matic is an analog recording videocassette format first shown by Sony as prototype in October 1969 and released to the market in September 1971. The U-matic tape and video cassette recorder (VCR) were the first cassettes available and among the first video formats to contain the videotape inside a cassette. According to videointerchange.com, U-matic "initially became a standard for early news gathering that was rapidly replacing 16mm film at the time. Image quality and particularly signal to noise ratio was superior to either Vhs or Beta. With only a 3 MHz bandwidth, it was capable of only 240 lines of resolution. Though a color under low-band format and definitely not "hi res", it was comparatively clean and would survive better the multi generation losses incurred during editing — much better than VHS or even Beta could ever hope to match. "With the advent of BetaCam, it was relegated to the higher end industrial marketplace. Using a quality verses price metric, the 3/4 U format was perhaps the most successful format of all time." References:
